World News - Judge Speeds Up Trial of Hospital Workers Charged With Infecting Kids With HIV in Libya

A judge Tuesday sped up the retrial of Bulgarian nurses charged with infecting children with the AIDS virus, ruling that the court would convene every week until a verdict was reached. Presiding judge Mahmoud Hawisa said that from now on, there would be a session every Tuesday. He also rejected an application for the accused to be released on bail.The ruling came in the retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who are charged with infecting more than 400 children with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, at a hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi. They were convicted and sentenced to death in 2004, but an international outcry followed as the trial was widely perceived as unfair. A French expert on AIDS had testified that HIV was rife in the hospital because of poor hygiene. Human rights groups accused the Libyan authorities of prosecuting the foreigners in a cover-up.... http://www.foxnews.com

The Southern Baptist Convention elected Frank Page as its new president Tuesday, a pastor who had said that it would take a "miracle" for him to win and was seen as an outsider pick. Page was the choice of a group of pastors, many from a younger generation than the current SBC leadership, who have complained that the denomination suppresses disagreements over styles of worship and doctrinal details. ...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2072100

An Israeli airstrike on a top Palestinian rocket launcher and his accomplice also killed two children and six other civilians Tuesday, inflaming Palestinian anger already aroused over the deaths of Gaza beachgoers. The violence coincided with bloody infighting among Palestinian gunmen, and could hurt attempts by President Mahmoud Abbas and the West to pressure the Hamas government to moderate its virulently anti-Israel stance. Abbas accused Israel of "state terrorism," and the Islamic Jihad militant group vowed to avenge the death of its chief rocket launcher, Hamoud Wadiya. An official Israeli inquiry, meanwhile, concluded Israel was not responsible for the blast that killed eight Gaza beachgoers Friday, rejecting Palestinian accusations that an Israeli artillery round was to blame. The results of the probe, released Tuesday, concluded the blast was caused by an explosive buried in the sand, but it was not clear how it got there. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2072056

The AFL-CIO plans to invest $700 million in housing and other projects to help rebuild this city left staggered by housing shortages and other infrastructure problems after Hurricane Katrina. The money will come from the union federation's pension fund and its lenders investments that should make money for the fund while aiding a city left hobbled by the enormous disaster, said AFL-CIO president John Sweeney in an interview Tuesday. It also will create union jobs in a region with an enormous number of construction projects. The union planned to officially announce the investment at a news conference Wednesday. "I was horrified that so little has been done," said Sweeney, who last visited New Orleans about a month ago and saw tracts of housing left in ruin since Katrina struck Aug. 29. "It feels like it's the city that America forgot." ...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2072084

Rep. Patrick Kennedy pleaded guilty Tuesday to driving under the influence of prescription drugs and was sentenced to undergo court-ordered drug treatment and a year’s probation. Kennedy, D-R.I., also was fined at least $350 in connection with his middle-of-the-night car crash last month near the U.S. Capitol. In exchange, two other charges against Kennedy were dismissed: Reckless driving and failure to exhibit a driving permit. Accompanied by his lawyer, Kennedy entered his plea Tuesday afternoon before Superior Court Magistrate Judge Aida Melendez. “I am pleading guilty to driving under the influence,” Kennedy said. Melendez ordered Kennedy to undergo court-monitored drug treatment, and pay $350 — $250 of which would go to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington, and $100 to a crime victims’ fund. She also gave Kennedy a 10-day jail sentence that he would serve if he violated the terms of his probation. ...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13297187/

A state institute has opened an investigation into whether communist-era security services in Poland and other former East bloc nations had a role in the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II, a spokesman said Tuesday. John Paul was shot and seriously wounded on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter's Square by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turk. But it has been suggested that larger political motives may have been behind the attack, because having a Polish-born pope was considered a danger by the Soviet leaders of the time."Prosecutors are gathering documents on whether communist services were part of a plot concerning this assassination attempt," Andrzej Arseniuk of the National Remembrance Institute told The Associated Press.He said the institute has asked Italy's Justice Ministry for files it has on the shooting and is also examining documents gathered by Italian magistrate Ferdinando Imposimato, whose own investigation concluded there was a Soviet link....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199335,00.html